Whatever happened to confession?

Since the 1970s, the number of American Catholics making private acts of confession to their parish priests has, in the oft-quoted words of Boston College historian James O'Toole, "fallen through the floor." Tentler, who has extensively studied North American women's responses to Pope Paul VTs 1968 encyclical, Humana Vitae, says there is no doubt that reproductive issues have had an effect'upon American women's approach to the sacrament of reconciliation.